Junior doctors face a 20 per cent pay cut after losing their free lodging at hospitals, it is claimed.

The Government has dumped the requirement for newly qualified doctors to be on site during their first year of training in Health Service wards.

As a result, hospitals can start charging for the beds they used to have to provide free.

Junior doctors will need to find around £400 a month - but their pay remains £21,000.

This amounts to a pay cut, according to doctors at the British Medical Association.

They say that junior doctors are already crippled with debts of around £37,000 after five years of study.

Hospital trusts can expect to make £3.5 million a year, although a last-minute reprieve by the Welsh Assembly means newly qualified medics in Wales will be exempt from the charge.

The BMA said the Government had broken a promise to consider a pay rise if the rules changed.

They also claim it will deter students from poorer backgrounds from entering medicine.

Spokesman Ian Noble added: 'The first year pay of junior doctors has been kept artificially low and the provision of free accommodation has been given as the reason.

'The Government have repeatedly promised, from as long ago as 2004 that the junior doctor contract would be amended to provide a compensatory pay rise or free housing should remain in place.

'With their refusal to discuss the issue with the BMA the Government has reneged on that promise and utterly let down every single medical student in this country.'

Dr Matthew Forbes, who is newly qualified from Sheffield University, moves to a central London teaching hospital next month, will have to pay £7,200 for a room on site.

He already has £35,000 of debt from student and bank loans as he received no parental financial support during his studies.

He said 'I am going to struggle badly to pay for living costs as well as service this debt.'This is a 20 per cent pay cut in disguise and the loss of accommodation should signal a compensatory pay rise.'

Mr Noble said the danger was that applicants for medical school would increasingly come from wealthy families despite the Government's aim to encourage poorer students to become doctors.

'We must not have these candidates priced out of the market' he added.

More than 4,000 letters of protest had been sent to MPs and there would be a nationwide campaign launched later this month, he said.

A Department of Health spokesman said there had been no promise to negotiate a pay rise. He added that because juniors would no longer have to be resident, this was an 'improvement' in their conditions of service.